The Jesuit

THE JESUIT / Joyce Carol Oates IN THOSE YEARS SHE BELIEVED in God without wanting to examine the belief. She carried the idea of God inside her the way many people carry inside them the thought of their own eventual extinction—it was logical, perhaps even consoling, but it could not be confronted head-on. God was not a being, still less a personality, but a fierce hard light she could only bear in the corner of her eye. She never prayed. Once or twice a day, usually while driving her car, she made a systematic effort to empty herself of herself, so that God might fill her. If nothing happened she felt saddened but not upset. Hers was to be a life, she knew, in which nothing would frequently happen. She was separated from her husband after only two years of marriage but in fact she had known—they had both known—that the marriage was a mistake after two months. They had married so swiftly, they'd never had a formal engagement, and now, living apart, in different cities, it seemed to her at times that she was engaged. She "had" someone. She was spoken for. She lived alone but she was not precisely a single woman just as, in a reverse logic, she had had a good deal of sexual experience yet was virginal again, younger than her age. She wrote long letters to her husband on the typewriter, read them in the morning, filed them away, embarrassed. Many years ago she'd heard an older friend of her parents say mysteriously, You can't force anyone to care deeply about you. Though she was no longer Catholic, had stopped going to mass at the age of fifteen, it happened that she was teaching in the night school program of a small Jesuit college. Above the blackboard in every classroom of the old stone and stucco building was a brass crucifix that drew the eye sharply to it. The Jesuit dean who had hired her made it clear that she was under no obligation to lead her students in a formal prayer—the man was so exquisitely tactful he had not even inquired into the precise state of her religious beliefs—but she began each class with a brisk Hail mary. It comforted her to cross herself and to observe most of her forty-three students crossing themselves as if she were facing a hall of mirrors. Hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou amongst women. And blessed is the fruit of Thy womb Jesus. The scattering of non-Catholics in the class stood at attention, eyes lowered, and she understood that they too were grateful for the harmless little prayer, the agreeable fuss of sliding out of seats, The Missouri Review · 51 standing, then sitting again. Clearing throats, coughing quietly. The prayer had nothing to do with God but there was, she thought, something wonderful about it. Aren't you clever! her husband had said. Aren't you the hypocrite! he'd said. But in a light bantering voice, meaning no hurt. Of the five or six teachers at the college with whom she was acquainted only one, a young Jesuit whose office was adjacent to hers, seemed to dislike her. In fact he hated her: stared at her with a loathing that seemed almost pure, it was so impersonal. At first she had nervously assumed that he was in an irritable mood—that something had just gone wrong, or that he didn't feel well—she was told he'd had a cancer operation a few years previously, a colostomy—then it became gradually clear that he simply hated her. He had hated her, she thought, even before they were formally introduced. He was tall, slope-shouldered, thin, with pale lashless eyes deep-set as if in bone, a long nose, wide dark nostrils, a mock-solemn manner. Thinning sandy hair, a scalp that shone through in glimmering patches. A space between his broad boyish front teeth. Black-polished shoes that creaked. Black umbrella tucked beneath his arm. Thirty years old, perhaps, thirty-one, -two: her own age approximately. The...